Tools To Select Color Palettes

Here are some great tools to select color palettes when you start working on a coloring page. Most color palettes except for one, only show 5 colors in a palette, but nothing prevents you from selecting or making two or three palettes that work with each other.

The first two tools are online. The rest are apps for the iPad or iPhone. Unfortunately, I don’t know if the apps are available for other phones; but you can always look for them. Most give at least Hex and RGB values. A color picker will be good to find those values for the one that doesn’t show them.

An Adobe website Color.Adobe .com provides a color palette tool. The tool lets you explore saved color themes or generate your own. You can choose from several different color rules to generate a palette: Analogous, Monochromatic, Triad, Complementary, Compound, Shades, or make your own. Each palette also gives you the Hex value and RGB value of the colors. There are 5 colors in each palette. If you have an Adobe account you can save your palettes, but you don’t need one to explore or use the tool.

Another online resource is ColorPalettes .net They have bunches of color palettes organized by Warm Palettes, Cool Palettes, Pastel Palettes, and Contrasting Palettes. You can also select two colors from a menu, and the tool will search for palettes based on those two colors. Each palette has 5 colors. One downside is that you can’t manipulate the colors in a palette and neither the Hex values nor RGB values are given. They seem to want you to buy the color cards, but there is no reason not to use the tool to search for what you like.

Pictoria Color Palettes from Alexey Kornilov
This app functions in a manner very similar to the Adobe palette generator, and you don’t need an Adobe account to save your palettes. The app generates color palettes for you or let’s you select colors from color wheel using Triad, Complementary, Double Complement, Split Complement, Monochromatic, or select your own colors. And you can use a photo as the basis for a color palette. The app only lets you select 5 colors for a palette. Once a color palette has been saved, you are able to see both the Hex value and RGB value for the colors.

Coolers from Fabrizio Bianchi
A very simple app with lots of palettes to choose from. You can change the colors to suit yourself. Or you can generate a completely new one. There are 5 colors in a palette. The app shows Hex, RGB, CMYK, and HSB color values for each color in a palette.

Color Viewfinder from Santiago Zavala
This app lets you generate a color palette from a photo. The best part about the app is that it shows a whopping 18 colors for you to select for your palette. HEX values are shown for each color. There doesn’t appear to be any editing capability beyond that, however.